


Not The Boy Next Door

by wordplay



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 03:48:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordplay/pseuds/wordplay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine Anderson is a struggling musician with a new job. This is the story of everything he finds there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not The Boy Next Door

**Author's Note:**

> This was a bear of a story to write. Thank you to [](http://whenidance.livejournal.com/profile)[**whenidance**](http://whenidance.livejournal.com/), [](http://mybriefeternity.livejournal.com/profile)[**mybriefeternity**](http://mybriefeternity.livejournal.com/) and [](http://hedgerose.livejournal.com/profile)[**hedgerose**](http://hedgerose.livejournal.com/) for early conversations and support. [](http://colfer.livejournal.com/profile)[**colfer**](http://colfer.livejournal.com/), [](http://contesstylus.livejournal.com/profile)[**contesstylus**](http://contesstylus.livejournal.com/) and [canuckjacq](canuckjacq.tumblr.com) provided very useful and thoughtful comments on early drafts, so thanks also to them. I am especially grateful to [](http://sillygleekt.livejournal.com/profile)[**sillygleekt**](http://sillygleekt.livejournal.com/) for her absolutely _tireless_ support and very insightful discussions on every single draft of this story. I could not have finished this without you, T, and I hope you know how much I appreciate you, as a beta and a friend. Finally, enormous thanks are due to [](http://contesstylus.livejournal.com/profile)[**contesstylus**](http://contesstylus.livejournal.com/), who most of you will know as [pencilpushingenthusiast](http://pencilpushingenthusiast.tumblr.com), not only for beautiful and inspirational work, but also for being so accommodating when I came to her with a fully hatched plot, for providing so much additional art in support of the story, and for being such an absolute and enthusiastic pleasure to work with. Thank you, CB, for everything. ♥ WE ARE DONE!
> 
> Completed as part of [](http://kbl-reversebang.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://kbl-reversebang.livejournal.com/)**kbl_reversebang** 2012! 
> 
> There are now two electronic versions of this story, thanks to [](http://sillygleekt.livejournal.com/profile)[**sillygleekt**](http://sillygleekt.livejournal.com/)! You can download this story, complete with the art, in either [pdf](http://sillygleek.com/bnd/not-the-boy-next-door.pdf) or [epub](http://sillygleek.com/bnd/not-the-boy-next-door.epub). Thank you so much! (Again!) ♥
> 
> This was posted originally on [LJ](http://wordplayitout.livejournal.com/25850.html). It represents a collaborative effort between author and artist, and if she ever starts posting fanart on AO3 the authorship of this story will be edited.

The pub is all dark wood and warm sunshine at two o’clock in the afternoon, and Blaine stands behind the bar and fiddles with the ties to his apron.

“So, yeah. Welcome, I guess. There’s not much to it. The bar is counter service in the afternoon, too, but mostly it’s quiet until the cops start drifting in around 4:30. You’ve tended bar before?”

He glances up from the mess he’s somehow already made of strings and stiff black fabric and smiles at his new coworker.

“Oh yeah. Definite veteran of the service industry with the wounded psyche to prove it.”

Tracy leans on the bar, chin on her fist, and looks him over. “Actor?”

“Musician.” He says it like he means it, and he concentrates on his apron so that he can ignore how weird it feels to say. He’s figured out the problem now – all those loose threads still dangling from the sewn ends of the ties have tangled together, and he yanks them loose then wads them into a ball.

“Hmmm,” she says, watching him. “You sure? You’ve got a good face – expressive eyes. You ever tried it?”

He shoves the ball of thread into his apron pocket and finally looks up at her. Her eyes are bright through the boredom, and he recognizes the look of a woman finding a new project. Just for a second she reminds him of his mother.

“I went to an all boys high school; we didn’t have a drama department. We had one hell of an a capella choir, though.”

She tilts her head and her eyes glance up at his hair, down at his shoulders. “Catholic?”

He likes the way she talks in questions, like it’s not worth the effort to try to be subtle about her nosiness. The pub is quiet in the afternoon – there’s one solitary guy sitting across the room with his back to them, his head buried in his laptop, and the only noises are banging and scraping from the kitchen. He leans back against the bar and glances at her.

“No. Well, I mean, yes – I am. Was, I guess. Sort of. But the school was more prep.” Her eyes light up. “All of the Latin, none of the nuns,” he jokes, turning to face the back wall and examine the setup there. It all looks fine, easy, familiar; there are more microdistillers than he’s used to, but there’s a reason his hours had started to dwindle at his old job and this place was hiring.

“Lucky you,” she says, and he leans over to poke at the bottles and grins at the smile he can hear in her voice. “All the homoerotic poetry, none of the guilt.”

“You know a lot about homoerotic Latin poetry?” he says, reaching out to straighten a bottle of vodka.

“You aren’t the only one familiar with the service industry, buddy. Musicians, actors, and eternal students. I’m door number three.”

“What was the bit about the eyes, then?”

“That was flirting.”

Blaine’s hand knocks against the bottles when he spins around a little faster than he’d meant to, but he’d expected some snappy comeback out of Tracy, not the sweetly sarcastic voice he’d actually gotten in return.

There’s a guy standing there, sliding an empty bowl onto the countertop and raising one brow at him, and Blaine’s first impression is that he has really, _really_ great hair.

“It was not!” Tracy’s standing straight up now, owning every inch of her height, and Blaine grins at the way she’s scowling across the bar. “Tell me he doesn’t look like an actor!”

The guy turns and looks him up and down. The brow still hasn’t come down, and when their eyes meet Blaine grins – he has really pretty eyes, too – and he smiles back. For a second too long, maybe, and then the guy’s smile falters a little.

He’s still looking at Blaine when he says, “I don’t think so, Tracy. Look how real his smile is.”

Blaine grins harder.

“Blaine, this is –“

“I’m Kurt,” he says, rushing in before Tracy can finish her sentence.

“– Kurt, _which I was getting to_. He’s a new regular. On good days it’s the grilled chicken salad with avocado instead of dressing and a glass of water. On bad days, bring him a cheeseburger and a martini and stay the hell out of his way.”

“How will I be able to tell?” It comes out playful and flirty, and Kurt smiles a little so he’s not even sorry.

Kurt shoots a look at Tracy that might be laced with death, and she smirks at him across the bar. “Oh, you’ll know. He mutters, and that sweet face looks pretty much like it does right now.” Tracy leans over the bar and cups Kurt’s chin, cooing while he glares at her.

“Ouch,” Blaine says with a small wince.

Kurt gives him an apologetic smile while he bats Tracy’s hand away and says, “Don’t worry about it – things seem to be looking up.”

What Kurt has said hits both of them just when Tracy says, “Now that? _That_ is flirting.”

\---

And maybe it was, but the next few weeks are pretty dull. Blaine gets up, checks his email before he goes out for a run, goes to work and does his job but also checks his email compulsively from his phone, comes home and maybe goes out. The best part of throwing himself into trying to make it as a musician is talking to people; most nights he ends up in bars, shaking hands and kissing cheeks, doing his best to nurse one drink all night long because he can’t afford any more than that. But he’s meeting people, and there are opportunities everywhere, even if they always seem to stop short before they fall into his hands. He tries not to take it as a sign.

The early shifts are just as slow as Tracy had said they would be. He does a lot of prep work – filling saltshakers, checking stocks, rolling silverware. Sometimes when the pub is mostly empty he’ll sing while he works, running lyrics under his breath while he runs through the shift’s tasks.

Most of the time he’s on his own now that he’s settled in, although sometimes Tracy or Bryan will be scheduled alongside him. They leave him alone for the most part, although Tracy will occasionally swing by and quote a bit of Martial at him, just for fun. That’s how he learns that the Romans had different verbs for the way that penetrated sexual partners would move their bodies when they were being fucked – one for boys and one for girls. It’s an equal opportunity kind of pleasure, and sometimes when he’s bored he rolls his favorite of the two words over on his tongue: _ceveo_. It’s an apt word, that hard ‘k’ sound rolling into luscious vowels. He really needs to get laid.

There’s not a prospect in sight, though, and even that moment with Kurt-of-the-happy-day-salads seems like a long time ago. Kurt comes in every day, and every day so far has been a salad day, which is good, he guesses. Kurt comes in and nods at Blaine, and Blaine says, “Your usual?” and Kurt smiles before he slips into his seat. He pulls out a laptop or a tablet and works while he eats. Sometimes he comes early, when the room is empty, and sometimes it’s later in the day when he has to jockey for a seat. He’s always alone, never with a friend or a date, and when the room fills up he sits and drinks his martini and stares into space. If it’s quiet Blaine will watch him, and it looks for all the world like he’s simply _listening_ , this tiny smile on his face and his fingers twitching.

It’s all very mysterious, but it’s not like he has a lot of time to think about it. Everything is busy, always busy, because this is New York. And when he asks the guys in the kitchen to add a few extra slices of avocado to the salad because “come on, that is just pathetic,” Kurt smiles up at him, brilliant and surprised, and Blaine says, “We have to make sure you keep coming back.”

\---

By September Blaine’s eased into the job, secure that there’s no way he’s getting fired. Bryan leaves to try his hand as a cater-waiter and Tracy starts dragging in late, her head lodged in whatever she’s reading that week. Somehow he’s become almost senior, and everybody is so dependent on his reliability that he could probably bring his guitar in and sing to the customers and nobody would bat an eye as long as the bar was stocked and the kitchen didn’t start backing up. He starts using the time as productively as possible – he responds to emails on his phone and he goes through all the alternative weeklies he can get his hands on, looking for showcases and open mic nights. He makes long lists of places he could try to get in, and he remembers his father's face the last time they fought before he left for New York, the way his father had put his foot down against Blaine’s choice to make a go at music, not after Cooper was still struggling, and how it had been the absolute last straw, his last stand. He works even harder.

One perfect early autumn afternoon he’s just wrapping up his research for the day and is lingering over the comics pages when Kurt comes in and pauses at the bar, watching him.

“Hey there,” Blaine says, dropping the paper on the bar and cradling his chin in his hand. Kurt looks as put together as he always does; it’s another knitwear day, and as much as Kurt seems untouchable, the sweater looks really soft. “Have we finally hit a cheeseburger day?”

Kurt’s smile is uncertain, suddenly, and he glances down at the paper again for a moment before he looks back up. “No. No, not at all. Just... surprised, I guess.”

“I do read,” he says, but he sweetens it with a smile.

Kurt rolls his eyes. “Thanks for clearing that up.”

Blaine stands up and picks up the paper, glancing down at the drawings on top. He grins and taps at the one in the bottom left corner before he offers it up. “Want the paper? There’s some fun stuff in here. I’ve been reading this one since college.”

Kurt leans forward, his smile brightening, before he steps back again. “No, I... thank you, really. But that’s fine. I’m going to go –“ and he waves at a table toward the back.

“Okay – I’ll bring your food when it’s ready.”

Kurt is head down into his laptop when he slides the salad onto the table, and Blaine goes back to the bar to finish tearing out the strip that had made him smile. It’s just a drawing of a regular guy, baseball cap on his head, saying, “I already know what I think about gay marriage. I think I’m ready for grandbabies, so I want my son to find a man.” It strikes exactly the right note, now that President Clinton is wrapping up her first term with another push at DOMA, this one certain to succeed. It’s a dream he couldn’t have imagined 10 years ago, and now even a comic strip this simple can be drawn without raising an eyebrow.

He digs blu-tack out of a drawer and sticks the cartoon up on the edge of a shelf, and when he turns around to face the bar he thinks he sees Kurt grinning up at him from under his lashes. He grins back at him, and sings under his breath for the rest of his shift, smiling extra bright when he sees that Kurt’s left him an extra $2 above his usual tip. Good moods really are contagious.

\---

A few weeks later the bar is quiet when Kurt comes in and drops his bag on the bar with a heavy sigh. He leans forward, bracing his hands against the bar, and says, “I think the day his finally come.”

Blaine feels his adrenaline spike and he drops his pencil where he was doing the crossword. “Oh. Wow. Okay, how do you like it?”

Kurt moves into action, shoving his bag to one side and climbing onto a stool. “Medium. Swiss. Mushrooms if they aren’t going to take too long.” By the time he’s done rattling off his order he’s settled himself down, elbows on the bar, looking grim.

“We have good avocados today – I checked earlier for you. Want some on there?”

Kurt’s smile is sweet, tired, a little touched, but he only says, “Perfect, thank you.” He drops his head forward so that his forehead is cradled in his palms, then lifts his head and says, “And no mushrooms then. Sorry,” before he drops it back down.

When he returns from the kitchen Kurt is still sitting there, head in his hands, so Blaine takes a few steps to the side and shakes a martini as quietly as he can, wrapping the shaker in a bar towel to muffle the noise. When he slides the glass into the shadow between Kurt’s face and the bar, Kurt lifts his head a fraction and, forehead still cushioned in his hands, offers a weak smile.

“Just following orders,” he says. “I can make you something else, but –“

“No,” Kurt interjects, sitting up straight for the first time. “No, this is perfect. Thank you.”

He takes a sip from the martini, and nods when Blaine slides him a plate of olives.

“Wanna talk about it?”

Kurt tilts his head, and Blaine watches him right back. “Part of the job description?”

“Something like that. Although I should warn you: conversations behind this bar tend to end up as lyrics.”

Kurt swallows the olive then snorts out a wry laugh. “You should have me sign a disclaimer, then.”

“No way – I can’t afford to get material anywhere else, and I can’t risk people turning me down.” Kurt tilts a brow in acknowledgement as he nods and takes a sip of his martini.

“Fair enough. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been sung a million times.”

Blaine’s heart drops because that can only mean one thing. “Oh. Broken heart?”

Kurt glances up, only a flash of bright blue before he’s looking down into his drink again. “Nothing quite that dramatic. It's just... something that I thought might happen that obviously isn’t.”

He nods. “I know that feeling. His mistake or yours?”

It takes a minute, but then Kurt looks up again, this time with a smile teasing at the corner of his mouth. "Wow," he finally says, a little breathless.

Blaine fiddles with his apron, and grins at Kurt's expression. "What? It's a fair question."

"No. No, it is. It's just that it's also exactly the right question."

"So it's his mistake."

A voice calls from the kitchen, letting Blaine know that Kurt’s burger is up, but Blaine holds his gaze until Kurt says, "Well of course it is," and then grins.  
\---

And just like that, Kurt starts sitting at the bar. Neither of them say anything about it; it’s simply their new normal. Kurt is back to his salad the next day, and if it’s quiet Blaine will lean against the bar and chatter with him while he flips through the paper. On the fourth day Tracy comes in and both eyebrows threaten to hit her hairline when she sees them there opposite each other, Kurt gesturing with his fork while he talks about the phone call he'd had last night with his stepbrother, who is a mechanic somewhere in the Midwest. Kurt rambles on while Blaine stares Tracy down, and when she gives him a dirty grin and a wink he shrugs and turns back to Kurt and his story.

As the fall passes Tracy grows more and more desperate, reading at a small table in the corner unless things are really busy. She begs Blaine to pick up shifts for her, and considering that she's got most of the late shifts nailed down and he's going nowhere fast, he's happy to do it; the late shift means more money, and he's not in a position to turn that down.

It's not like he's doing anything else with his evenings, anyway. His guitar still sits by his bed, and he’s still making phone calls and playing showcases every once in a while, but lately he's gotten stuck reading through Jonathan Kozol’s back catalog, because the state of public schooling in America is really quite appalling. While he drifts to sleep he daydreams about making a change, a difference, with only a piano and a room full of kids and the right way of thinking.

\---

One lazy, drizzly afternoon in mid-October Kurt lingers after lunch; even after his shallow bowl has been cleaned away, he sits there at the bar and chats with Blaine while he isn’t helping other customers. Their conversations go everywhere – the provenance of the uniquely ornate clock at the end of the bar, the latest developments in the DOMA battle, the newest singles on the radio, Kurt’s crazy downstairs neighbors and how much Blaine wants a dog.

There’s a lull at around 3:30, and Blaine stretches and goes for the boxes of silverware and napkins, dropping them onto the bar with a heavy thunk. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

Kurt waves the question away with the hand that had been toying with his water glass. “I work in publishing and theater, I make my own hours.” He lifts his head from where it’s been resting on his fist and says, “Here. Slide some of those over. It’ll go more quickly with two hands. Well, four, I guess.”

He shows Kurt how to do one, and then gets stuck watching Kurt’s fingers, long and sure, folding the napkin neatly and rolling the silverware within it. They work quietly for a few minutes, and then Kurt says, “So how’s the music thing coming, then?”

Blaine bobbles his head back and forth. “I mean, it’s slow, but I think it’s good. I’m meeting a lot of people, so that can’t hurt, right?”

“Are you playing? Do you have a regular thing?”

“Nope.” Blaine lets the word pop out of his mouth, like it doesn’t bother him at all. It actually _doesn’t_ , not that much, and that’s a little worrisome but he’s easing into it. “There’s another showcase coming up, though, that I think I’m going to play in.” He pauses for a moment, unsure of himself, before he dives in. “You should come.”

Kurt’s smile is brilliant. “I would love that. Let me know when and I’ll try to clear my schedule.”

“You don’t even know if I’m any good!”

“So are you?”

Blaine thinks about it for a minute. “I think that... you know, I think I am. Good, I mean.”

Kurt snorts, and Blaine grins down at his silverware because it’s so uncharacteristically inelegant. “There’s a ringing endorsement.”

“Well, I mean... it’s like that cartoon. From the same strip I showed you the other day?”

When Blaine looks up from the silverware, Kurt’s face is unreadable.

“‘ _Not The Boy Next Door_? Nothing?”

Kurt shakes his head, his eyes wide, and Blaine goes back to his silverware, lining of the pieces on top of crisp white napkins. “So, one of the characters is this girl – total princess type, headband, really prissy clothes – and one of my favorites is this one where it’s just her, sitting there looking sad in front of a full-to-bursting trophy case and saying, ‘I just want everybody to love me. I don’t know why I’m not famous yet.’”

A few seconds later Kurt asks, “And that’s what you want?”

“No, of course not. I want to... I don’t know. To make art and help people. Which sounds dumb, but when I think about what it will look like when I’m successful, that’s all it is – one person whose life is a little bit better from my music.”

The look on Kurt’s face is... actually, he has no idea what that look is, because there’s a grin around his mouth but his eyes are very wide, sort of shocked. Finally Kurt says, “You take all of your life wisdom from cartoons?”

Blaine snaps a napkin in Kurt’s direction, and Kurt rears back with his hands held high, a smartass grin on his face. Blaine says, “Hey, it’s a once-a-week indulgence. A man has to live for something.”

“I suppose so,” Kurt says. “You should give me the information on the showcase. If my schedule allows it, I’ll be there.”

For the next 10 minutes they roll silverware, mostly quiet. Blaine can’t help stealing little peeks at him, though – at the expression of calm focus, at his hands, at the way his hair falls over his forehead. When Kurt sighs and says, “Okay, that’s enough of that – back to work, I guess,” he pauses and stares at Blaine before he says, “What? Why are you smiling?”

“No reason. Thanks for the help.”

\---

It’s another week of lunches before his showcase, and he shoves a flier over the bar with Kurt’s salad one day. It’s just a small thing, a Thursday night singer-songwriter event at a bar in Brooklyn, but Kurt grins at it and says, “I’ll be there.”

Blaine spends the next week gearing himself up for it. It’s only a showcase, the silliest of things to get worried about. He’s had friends attend them before – he’d hung flyers at the boxing gym before he’d quit going because of money, and Tracy had come to one two weeks ago – and after all of his meeting and greeting he has friends _there_ ; it’s the same group of them in and out of these showcases and open mics and songwriter nights, and they’re fiercely, jovially competitive, and some of them he is getting to know and even like. But he wants to impress Kurt more than he’d realized. Kurt’s opinion somehow _matters_.

The night is rainy – of course – so the crowd is smaller than expected, but he sits at a table near the corner, his guitar case at his feet, and tries not to watch the door.

When it’s finally time, he looks up from tuning just in time to catch Kurt in profile. He’s removing his scarf, running his fingers through his hair, and ordering a drink all at the same time. He turns his head and his eyes light up when they meet Blaine’s – and just like that, Blaine finishes falling and lands, his heart wide open.

_Oh._

He’s not sure how he makes it through his set. He sings love songs, tender ballads and bitter pop laments, and he knows his eyes steal to Kurt far more often than they should, snagging on his neck, his hands, his bright eyes, and he only hopes that everything he’s feeling isn’t written across his face. By the end he kind of hopes it is, because Kurt’s smile is sweet, open, and maybe it will be just this easy. He can open himself up here, for this room and this man, and there won’t have to be words, or an awkward transition – it’ll just... happen.

He finishes to applause, ranging from tepid through polite to enthusiastic, and he says thanks and puts his guitar in its case and starts making his way back to the bar. He gets caught on his way, though – a kiss to his cheek from Teddy, a hug from Lainey, and a fervent squeeze from James, who crows out, “That’s my boy!” He laughs, every time, because this feeling is amazing – the joy of performance, the thrill of discovery – it’s been the most perfect night, and he can’t wait to get to Kurt to finish it, to put a cap on it, to seal it with a kiss.

By the time he makes it to the bar, though, Kurt is gone. He asks the bartender, and Mike says, “Yeah, the guy with the martinis. He just left, man.” He immediately turns and runs for the door, but the street is empty, taxis and a crowd of umbrellas, and when he makes it back inside James says, “Dude, you’re all wet!”

He thinks he laughs.

\---

Kurt comes in the next day at two o’clock. Blaine is aware of him the moment he walks into the room, but he waits until Kurt’s bag thumps onto the bar to look up, to smile brightly at him.

Kurt’s face is drawn, a little anxious, and Blaine says, “Oops. Another burger day?”

His smile is weak, not making it past his mouth, and Blaine wonders suddenly how often that’s the case, if maybe he’s simply never noticed. “No,” Kurt says, “just the usual, please.”

Blaine goes to the kitchen rather than calling out, asks the guys to slip on some extra avocado, and when he’s back Kurt is looking down at the bar, blushing a little.

“You got out of there pretty quick last night,” he says. “Weren’t happy with what you heard?”

His head whips up so fast that his hair shakes and bobbles with it. “Oh! Oh, _god_ no! No, it wasn’t that at all.” Blaine grins, because Kurt tripping over his words is absolutely adorable. “You were amazing, Blaine, really. Truly. I have sat through some _awful_ performances in the name of friendship, but you were spectacular. Really. Couldn’t take my eyes off of you.” Kurt’s eyes widen as he says that, but he doesn’t look down again, so Blaine grins.

“Oh. Well, good! I mean, that’s great! Thank you! I’m touched.” Kurt grins at him, everything suddenly easy again, so Blaine pushes his luck and says, “I wish you’d stuck around, though. I really wanted to buy you a drink, maybe hang out somewhere that wasn’t, you know – here.” He waves his hand around the bar.

Kurt tilts his head to the side and looks at him, a tiny grin playing at one corner of his mouth. “Really? You seemed very busy, afterward. Lots of adoring fans, it looked like.”

And just like that, he gets it. “What, those guys? No, no way – those are my... well, they’re my colleagues, I guess.” Kurt’s expression is unmoved, still curious. “You play these circuits, these gigs, over and over again, and eventually you start to recognize people. And there’s nobody else to tell us we’re great, although god knows we keep waiting, so you have to, you know. Do it for each other. It’s part of our job.”

“Oh.”

That’s all he says, but the smile is hitting his eyes now, and when somebody calls his name from the kitchen Blaine says, “Be right back.”

He slides Kurt’s salad onto the bar and says, “There you go. Now. Tell me: what was your favorite part?”

Kurt’s laugh rings out longer than it probably should, and Blaine feels way too relieved.

\---

Another week and a half passes. Tracy is fully lost to poetry in dead languages now, and Blaine is picking up more and more of her shifts. He’s spending less time trying to chase down gigs as a result, and James texts him to ask, “Hey – where are you?” He texts back when the bar is full, “Work is crazy. I think I’ll make it back, but no time soon.” It should bother him more than it does, but he’s happy. He loves talking to people at the bar about their lives and their problems, he loves having time for the movies he checks out of the library, and he sees Kurt every day, and every day it feels flirtier than the day before. Tracy even comments on it, sniping under her voice, “Oh my god, isn’t it time you _admitted your feelings_ and stuck your tongue down his throat?” but he hipchecks her over and over until she grins and then carries on.

Life is too good to care much – he’s bringing in money, he’s enjoying his job, and yesterday he and Kurt had spent like three minutes pressed palm to palm, comparing the length of their fingers on the pretense of talking about playing guitar and piano. And yes, it was ridiculous, and juvenile, but Kurt’s hands were warm and strong against his own, and his eyes were pretty and playful and so blue, and he’s _enjoying_ this, this long slow build into something that he thinks might be pretty incredible.

On Tuesday Kurt’s in high spirits when he throws his bag against the bar, and he perches on the stool and says, “ _I_ am on vacation!”

Blaine drops the paper and leans against the bar. “Well look at you, all glowy today.”

“Did you not hear me? _Vacation_ , Blaine.” He bounces on the stool, and Blaine laughs to see it.

“Does that mean you’ll be leaving us?”

Kurt rests his chin on his fist and grins playfully, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “It’s only for a week. My parents’ wedding anniversary is this weekend, and I can get away, so I’m headed home for the first time in a few years to see them.”

“Sounds like you’re safe to have a drink, then,” he says, and he starts pouring.

“You have no idea how excited I am and yes, absolutely.” He watches Kurt watch him, grinning to himself when he sees Kurt’s eyes lingering on his forearms. Kurt leans forward then, seemingly on impulse, and says, “Have a drink with me. My treat.”

Blaine watches him while he strains the martini – he’s done this so often that he can do it by feel and the sound of the liquid hitting the glass, and right now he feels like showing off a little – and grins at Kurt while he starts making one for himself.

When he’s poured his own glass, Kurt holds his up, and they touch glasses and drink, grinning at each other. If he weren’t working, he’d lean over and kiss Kurt right now, taste that smirk that’s there at the corner of his wide mouth. The moment holds until it’s held too long, and then Kurt looks down and takes another sip.

Blaine does the same and says, “Hey, you want some lunch?”

Forty-five minutes later Kurt is standing awkwardly by the bar, ready to go.

“So you’ll be back, what? This weekend?”

“Not until early next week, I think.”

Blaine pouts. “We’ll that’s no fun. I’m going to have to tell the kitchen to halve their avocado order. You’ll come in when you’re back?”

“Of course I will. You really have to ask?”

Blaine shrugs and watches him, and the moment stretches until Kurt’s smile fades a little bit and they’re still staring. Kurt finally rolls his eyes and taps twice against Blaine’s paper where it’s folded open to the comics page. “Read your paper,” he says. “You never know what you’ll find in there.” Then he winks, and is gone. Blaine watches him go.

\---

The week passes slowly. Blaine works, he goes out on Wednesday and cheers for James and Lainey, and enjoys their sets without wishing for one of his own. And he thinks about Kurt, about that last long stare, about what will happen the next time he sees him. In quiet moments at the bar and on his run and in the shower, in every moment that his mind is free to wander, he thinks about flirting over lunch. He thinks about asking him out, about how he should do it, about kissing him and holding his hand and sometimes even tasting his skin. And he starts to make plans.

\---

Friday night Tracy comes in and smacks both hands on the bar, startling the cop who’s sitting there nursing a beer. He finishes up weakly with, “And that’s why I don’t think just talking to her will work but, um, thanks man,” before he slinks off.

“Thanks, Tracy. He was just settling in.”

She glances after the cop and says, “He’s pathetic enough – he’ll be back. Have you been checking _Not The Boy Next Door_ this week?”

“Oh, shit, no. I forgot – they’re doing that special thing, right? Are you following?” He remembers the editor’s note, now, just a little text announcement under Tuesday’s comic that they’d be doing daily online installments of this strip for the next week in an effort to try something a little new.

She smirks at him and says, “You are _so_ lucky to know me. This is today’s.”

She fumbles for her phone and holds it out until he takes it. It’s hard to see the image at first, but then his eyes widen and he wipes his hand on a bar towel so he can drag two fingers across it.

Tracy is saying something, but he can’t hear anything over the buzzing in his ears.

“Where’s the rest of it? What did I miss?” His heart pounds as he shoves the phone back toward Tracy and drums his thumbs against the bar once she takes it, and he instantly thinks back to the last time he’d seen Kurt. _‘Read your paper. You never know what you’ll find in there,’_ he’d said, and Blaine had been too busy grinning at him and watching him leave to think about it. That was the day with the drawing of a familiar-looking tumbler, though – he remembers smiling because it was the same type of glass they use at the bar for water. But it can’t... that’s just not....

Tracy navigates for a second, and he drums his fingers against the bar, all rhythm gone. She finally hands it back over with another smirk and says, “That’s _Tuesday’s_. The other ones are in the other tabs – just scroll over.”

He looks again at the drawing – at the water glass and the wrapped silverware. The second drawing makes him smile, because oh my god, he almost missed this. And in this context, in this room, with this sequence of images... the implication is so clear that he can’t believe he didn’t know before.

"Avocado," he breathes out, and it's all he can do to get to the next tab.

And then it’s Thursday’s drawing, and he he grins at the phone and sighs out, “Oh my god, he was _adorable!”_

The indignant tilt of his chin and his crossed arms, his tight level mouth, all paint a picture of a boy who knows what he wants. Blaine doesn’t think it’s difficult; he thinks it’s _wonderful_.

Tracy leans over the bar, and he lowers the phone down so they can both look at it. “Disgusting. Man, he really was. And doesn’t _that_ little frown look familiar?”

Blaine looks at it a little bit longer, because of course it does, and then he pulls the phone back toward him and flips to today's entry, the picture that had sent him into a tailspin.

He's been looking in the mirror every day for years, staring at himself and wondering who he could become, and he would recognize his own eyes anywhere. He's always thought they were unremarkable – expressive, maybe, like Tracy had said, but not particularly beautiful. And now here they are, so carefully rendered, and he can't help remembering the conversation Kurt had walked into all those weeks ago, back when they first met.

He reluctantly hands the phone back to Tracy. Everything reminds him of Kurt now but even so, there is only one person that could be – those salads, that frown, the wrapped silverware. He never could have known before this moment, but in retrospect the clues fall into place in one long line. Kurt’s hours, his job in ‘publishing’, the stories about his friends. Kurt had even talked about his dad, and he’s been looking at the everyman for so long that he never... well.

He takes a deep breath and then blows it out. “It’s a week of those, right?”

“Yep. Know anything else that’s supposed to last a week right about now?” Her smile is wicked, knowing.

Blaine simply says, “Hey, can you text me the link for those? I want to make sure I keep up with them from now on.”

“Done, but hey. I’m going to need to swap some more shifts with you, if you can.” He pulls a face, but she says, “You owe me,” and she’s not wrong.

\---

Saturday morning Blaine is up with the sun, and he lies in his tiny studio and reaches for his phone. Yesterday’s strip is still up, and he brings his phone close to his face to study it.

The lines are so different. There’s so much warmth here, a kind of realism that is completely different from what he’s used to seeing from this artist. From Kurt, he now realizes, and he lies in bed and reconciles what he knows of the tender-hearted, defensive man he knows and the cartoonist he’s been following for years now.

Kurt is strong, rigid, sarcastic and bitchy and kind. He loves his father ( _oh, his father_ , he thinks as the penny drops again, and oh god he wants to meet him so badly) and his friends and his laptop and his avocados.

And, apparently, he is interested.

He doesn’t squeal like a little girl, but he might kick his feet. A little.

He refreshes the browser three more times, and then makes himself get up and go for a run. He leaves the phone at home, on purpose, to make himself wait. When he staggers back up the stairs an hour later, though, he drags his shirt off over his head and drops it on the floor while he scoops it from his nightstand.

There’s a text message from Tracy: “Oh my god! Are you Abelard or Heloise? It’s official: once you two get your shit together, you are finding me a man.”

He grins and refreshes the page one more time, smiling harder when there’s a link at the bottom pointing him to the next page. He clicks the link, and waits for it to come up.

“Oh, Kurt,” he whispers. “How could I not?” Kurt is reaching for him, or maybe he’s reaching for Kurt. He studies the nails, the long fingers, and he grins when he thinks about how they felt against his own. It fades when he thinks of how close he had almost come to missing this; if Tracy hadn’t said something he might never have known this sweet, careful revelation of Kurt. It would have been such a loss.

That afternoon he goes to the bar. It’s a Saturday night and the room is full and the money and the alcohol are flowing. He stays late to cover for Tracy and he goes home with a pocket full of tips and goes to bed early.

Sunday passes in a haze of laundry and compulsively checking his phone. It doesn’t go up until 2:30, and when he does, he texts Tracy. “Check the website. Look familiar? Note the time, so I’m coming in for a few minutes tomorrow. Please don’t make this a bigger deal than it already is.”

\---

By the time he wakes up the next morning at 10:30, the website is already live. The drawing is enormous and takes a while to load, and he has to scroll across the screen just to take it all in.

He breathes through his joy. Each line captures so much warmth of the place, of their interaction. The detail is breathtaking - the bottles, the clock, the peace of the scene. But the central figures draw his attention, and as he lies in bed he can't help but stare.

And _grin_. It hasn’t been much of a mystery for a while now, but seeing it in black and white, in clear and careful pencil strokes and not just something he’s made up to keep himself occupied and entertained is exactly what he needs right now. That’s him, and that’s Kurt, gazing at each other across the bar, and this is happening. Kurt looks beautiful, declaring himself for the artist he is, pencil finally in hand, and he can’t wait to see him again.

\---

Kurt comes through the door at 1:55, his bag banging against his side just like usual. He’s in that favorite grey cardigan of his, and a blue scarf hangs around his neck, wrapped against the chill.

Blaine picks up the shaker the minute he sees him, and he watches his own hands pour the martini before he slides it over. Kurt meets him there, and as he lets go of the glass he lets his fingers drift across the back of Kurt’s hand.

“Welcome back. You are _incredibly_ talented. And you’ve been holding out on me.”

Kurt blushes, but he takes a sip of the martini. His eyes meet Blaine’s over the lip of the glass, and in the afternoon light they look so _blue_.

Kurt puts the glass on the bar and slides onto a stool. “So you saw them.”

“I did. I – _Kurt_.”

Kurt sighs and opens his mouth to say something, but just then Tracy passes behind him and nudges Kurt on the shoulder, knocking him forward a little. He turns to look at her, but she’s gone past, hurrying to deliver plates to a pair of tourists in the corner.

Blaine says, “I switched shifts with Tracy so I can be off today; I’m not actually on the clock right now. You wanna... I don’t know. Get out of here? See each other somewhere else?”

Kurt’s smile is delighted. “You came in just for me?”

“I figure after the week of effort you put in, hanging out here for a few minutes wasn’t much of a hardship.” Kurt looks down at the hands sitting inches from each other on the bar and smiles, and Blaine reaches over to finally hold Kurt’s in his own. Kurt’s hand is still a little chilled from outside, and he tightens his fingers around it and strokes it with his thumb. “Hey. I need to hang up my apron. Come back with me?” Kurt looks up from their hands, and his smile is beautiful.

The silence is thick between them when they meet at the end of the bar, and Blaine hates that it’s suddenly so awkward. The small office where the staff hang their aprons is quiet, so Blaine says, “I was thinking – you haven’t had lunch yet, have you? Because you... I mean. You usually eat here. So do you want to go find somewhere to grab a quick bite? Somewhere without a Tracy?” He turns to Kurt with a grin when he says it, and Kurt is leaning against the door watching him, a hint of a smile in his eyes.

“I want to try something first,” Kurt says quiet and low. Blaine turns around after he hangs his apron on the peg, and Kurt has come closer. It’s dim and dingy and the muffled clatter of glass and metal from the kitchen beats an uneven rhythm, but Kurt’s eyes are still soft. “This is where this is going, right?”

Blaine reaches out to him and gets him by the arm, because he’d hoped it was before and he’ll be damned if he lets it go anywhere else. He tugs a little, and says, “I hope so.”

“Then let’s make sure.” Kurt’s eyes close as he leans in and kisses him.

It’s a soft brush of breath and Kurt’s soft lips, the bite of gin over sweet peppermint, and Blaine’s heart soars; Kurt came ready to kiss him. His mouth is gentle, though – so tentative and careful, just in case – so Blaine grips his arm tighter and squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on Kurt’s mouth against his own. It’s the gentlest motion, lips sliding against each other, and after a few seconds Kurt slides back, looks down at him and whispers, “Okay?”

Blaine studies his face, his wide, earnest eyes judging and assessing him. Kurt is always watching, and there are things that Blaine knows his face must be saying but he can’t quite trust that Kurt is reading them right. He wants this to be very clear; Kurt’s made his declarations twice now.

Blaine uses his grip on Kurt’s arm to tug. He’s done with tentative explorations and taking it slow. “Come back here,” he whispers, and he takes Kurt’s mouth again, slipping his tongue out to slide against Kurt’s. Kurt kisses carefully, methodically, always testing and already it makes Blaine crazy for him, so he slides his hands around to press Kurt in tighter. Kurt is solid against him, the wool of his cardigan soft and scratchy against his fingers, and when he slides his hand into the small of Kurt’s back and sucks at his tongue, Kurt whimpers into his mouth.

He grins into the kiss and pulls away in a series of small kisses, finishing with a kiss to Kurt’s nose. His eyes are unfocused, his pupils wide, and when he whispers, “Really okay. Come have lunch with me,” Kurt nods and rests his forehead against his own.

\----

They go to a café two streets over, where they sit and stare at each other, unable to stop grinning. Blaine won’t let go of his hand, and he can’t stop feeling Kurt’s skin. He traces down each of Kurt’s fingers and lingers over the calloused little dent in his middle finger – “hazards of the profession,” Kurt says. Blaine loves it.

The waiter comes twice to see if they’re ready to order, but both times they’re pulled out of conversation and have no idea what’s even on the menu. After the second time, Kurt looks at him and after a long pause, his gaze thoughtful, he says, “Obviously you know that I live nearby. Would you like to come back to my place?”

\----

Kurt’s apartment is small but well-kept, and Blaine gets a vague impression of muted colors and clean lines before Kurt presses him down onto the sofa and leans over him. Blaine flips them over a few minutes later, pushing Kurt onto his back and into the sofa so that he can hover, so that he can get to more of him.

When Blaine mouths gently at the tender lobe of his ear and runs his fingers under the waistband of his trousers, Kurt gasps out, “I can’t go to bed with you yet – I don’t even _know_ you.”

“We’ve been getting to know each other for months.”

“Right, but not _dating_.”

He props himself up above Kurt and looks down at him. His hair is disheveled and his lips are red and his eyes are wide. “I’m Blaine Anderson. I grew up in Ohio but got here as soon as I could. I’ve slept with five people and had two real boyfriends, and both of those relationships ended well. I’m trying to make it as a musician, I play the guitar and the piano and I sing. My dad still wants me to go to law school, and all my mother wants is for me to be happy, even if it’s just tending bar. I like movies better than books because they take less time; I like boxing better than running but running is cheaper.” He leans in and mouths at Kurt’s throat, letting his tongue slide along silky skin and stubble before he continues, his voice quieter now that he’s close enough to Kurt’s skin to taste it. “I’ve wanted to kiss your neck for weeks, and it’s as good as I thought it would be, but now I really want to take off your clothes.” Kurt’s groan is deep and breathy and sounds nothing like ‘no’, so Blaine bites gently at his Adam’s apple and nudges his hips closer. “What else?”

Kurt’s head strains back against the armrest, and his voice is breathy and rushed. “I’m Kurt Hummel. I wanted to be a Broadway star or a fashion designer but ended up in a costume shop before I became an editorial cartoonist who sometimes still works as a dresser, and that path is way too long and convoluted to trace out now. I grew up in Ohio, too, and we should talk about that. I tend to take friends as lovers instead of having real boyfriends, but I’ve thought for a while that it’s time to try something new. This’ll never work, though – I like books _and_ movies, for different reasons, and I’m a yoga and Pilates person.”

Blaine’s fingers work at the buttons of Kurt’s shirt in the small space between their bodies, and he scratches against soft, warm cotton until he gets to skin and the muscles of Kurt’s abdomen flex under his fingertips. “Bendy.”

“Quite.” Kurt says, and his voice is rich and playful.

“You’re right,” he breathes against Kurt’s mouth. “That sounds horrible.”

Kurt’s fingers dig in. “And all that boxing has left you with these shoulders, _my god_. It’s completely impossible.”

He pauses his exploration of Kurt’s throat to look down at him. Kurt’s eyes are wide, his pupils swallowing the blue. “You forgot to tell me that you like grilled chicken salad with slices of good avocado instead of dressing, or that your favorite indulgence is a martini in the afternoon. And there was nothing about blue being your favorite color, or that you like fabrics that feel good under your hands, or that you have a wicked sense of humor and a very tender heart.”

“Those are just details,” Kurt insists.

“What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?”

“I don’t eat ice cream,” Kurt says, and it comes out so automatically that Blaine leans down to bite against his neck.

“Liar. Come on, your absolute favorite.”

“Ben & Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake,” he gasps out, all in one long string, and Blaine sucks a kiss to his throat as a reward.

“That’s what I thought.” He props himself up to look at Kurt again, and then leans down to whisper against his ear. He can’t stand being too far away. “It’s _all_ details. I know you, but not as well as I want to and not as well as I’m going to. Can I take you to bed now?”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Kurt says, as he tumbles them to the floor and pins him there.

\---

They end the day in Kurt’s bed; Kurt pulls on a pair of boxer briefs and a hastily buttoned shirt and uses his laptop to order Thai and leaves to answer the door with promises to bring everything back to bed. Blaine lies on his back across Kurt’s bed, his limbs heavy, and looks at the room in the dying light from the window. Kurt’s laptop is plugged in and charging on the corner of his desk, and something about that makes him smile; it’s out of context, new but nothing like unwelcome.

They’ve spent the afternoon and into the evening moving from couch to floor and finally to bed, and Blaine’s ready to settle in for the foreseeable future. Their hands had never left each other; even when they pulled away for some of the best conversations Blaine has ever had, their fingers had been interlaced or sliding over warm skin. Kurt is full of stories, about growing up in Lima and working in a costume shop and his dad’s bizarre stint in Congress and a crush he'd had over the summer that had come crashing down around him just in time for a cute bartender to bring him a cheeseburger with avocado, and Blaine had smiled and kissed him gently. Blaine had told him so much, really. About his family, about past boyfriends, about the things he loves about music but the way he might be growing past the wish to make it a career. Kurt had listened while he’d rambled through an explanation of that last thing, his eyes soft and his fingers drifting through Blaine’s hair and down his jawline, and then he’s said, “You’re good – I think you could do it if you want to. You could make it in a way I never could, I think, but you have to want it more than anything else.” Blaine hadn’t thought he could ever want anything more than what he had right then, and when he’d said so Kurt had leaned down and whispered against his mouth, “Okay, that deserves another kiss,” and then they hadn’t really talked for another 45 minutes. Not with words, anyway.

When Kurt comes back with food he’s full of shy smiles, and he sits a full tray on the bed. “Nice to be serving you, for once,” he says, and Blaine slips his hand up under Kurt’s shirt to get to his skin. All afternoon he hasn’t been able to stop touching him, his palms hungry for the sweet slide of him, and Kurt turns and smiles down at him fondly. “Do you not want to eat?”

Blaine grins up at him and leans up to him, stealing another slow kiss. It’s been hours of this now, and the urgency is gone, but he still feels drunk on it, on the reality and the possibility curving out ahead of them. “I could eat,” he mumbles against Kurt’s mouth, and just then his stomach grumbles.

Kurt pulls back, breaking the kiss with a laugh. “We skipped lunch. Here,” he says, as he holds out a fried spring roll.

Blaine grins into the bite, and Kurt smiles at him while he does. He falls back onto the pillows to chew, and Kurt raises a brow at him. “You expect me to feed you?”

He swallows and says, “I don’t know. Seems fair. How many lunches have I brought you? And this is just one meal. I think you should have to work for it.” He beams up at Kurt, who scoffs.

“What have you been looking at for the last week? I think I _did_ work for it, thank you,” and he takes the next bite of spring roll for himself.

Blaine pushes himself to seated and says, “Okay, point.”

Kurt drags over the tray and says, “Exactly. So feed yourself. And then we can shower.”

They eat quickly – everything is so good, and Blaine can’t help feeding Kurt. He looks soft, his hair mussed and his shirt askew, and while Kurt chews noodles Blaine takes advantage of the opportunity to push the shirt off one shoulder and pepper kisses across his skin.

“You are ridiculous,” Kurt says as he lifts a dumpling to Blaine’s mouth in return. “Hurry, eat, and we can get back to that!” Blaine captures his hand on the way back down to the bed and holds it between both of his own. He gets it by the wrist and holds it up, and when he finishes chewing he looks at Kurt and holds his own up to it and then grins, cocking one brow at him.

“Yes, yes, you’re very flirty.”

He slides his fingers down to lace with Kurt’s and says, “It worked, didn’t it?”

Kurt kisses him soft and sweet then, his mouth tasting like coriander and fish sauce, and Blaine can’t stop grinning. Five minutes later he pulls away, gasping, “Wait, let me –“ and he moves the tray off the bed, pushing it into a corner underneath a drying rack draped with sweaters.

When he turns back to the bed, Kurt is sprawled across it, arms thrown out to the sides, his dick straining again against the front of his boxer briefs. Blaine grins and takes to the bed on one knee before he kisses his way down Kurt’s neck. His skin is so soft, pink and white, and the hair on his chest is this gorgeous dusting of pale brown. He’s already half in love with Kurt’s belly, with the way kisses make the muscles tense against his tongue. He watches Kurt’s face as he eases the boxer briefs back down; his eyes are glassy, his mouth red and wide open.

“Oh, I guess we can shower later,” Kurt gasps out, his hands coming to rest in Blaine’s hair.

Kurt’s dick is rosy, long and thick and Blaine wants to breathe him in, wants to swallow him whole, and the best he can do is suck him into his mouth, to hold him there. He suckles the head, uses his hands to push Kurt’s thighs wider, and lets his lips slip down so that he’s deep, the head tickling against his soft palate so he can prepare to swallow around him.

Kurt gasps out, “Oh god. Yes. That... _suck_ it, Blaine.”

It’s a filthy perfect present, hearing that come out of Kurt’s mouth while Kurt tugs gently at his hair, and he moans around Kurt’s dick. And he does what he’s told.

\---

Six weeks later, Blaine is back at the bar, serving and periodically glancing at the door, waiting for Kurt; he’s been pushing to next week’s deadline and it’s already after five, but he promised to come by once he was done. He hasn’t been around as much the last week or so, after he finally broke down and confessed to Blaine that he was so _tired_ of eating out for lunch every day, and now that they’re in and out of each other’s space so often they don’t need time at the bar in quite the same way.

Last night Blaine slept over at Kurt’s again, and it’s probably far too soon but this morning Kurt stood in his tiny scrap of a kitchen and drank grapefruit juice and slid something across the counter. It was a key to his apartment, and then right after that Kurt’s mouth was cold and tart and smiling against his own. Blaine grins at the memory and fingers the key in his apron pocket.

He gets busy for a minute, and suddenly Kurt is right in front of him, pushing his way through Happy Hour crowds and frowning a little at the close quarters.

“Hey there!” Blaine cries, and he pushes his weight onto his hands and leans over the bar for a kiss, short and sweet, and when Kurt bites at his lip a little he pushes up again and dives in for a second kiss, making this one last.

Tracy, naturally, responds by shouting Catullus at the top of her lungs, as has been her habit these last few weeks. _“Da mi basia mille, deinde centum,”_ and Blaine breaks the kiss to settle back behind the bar and swat at her with the back of his hand.

“Don’t be jealous,” Kurt snipes. “I told you – get through finals and we’ll find you a man.”

“How, by aggressively _taking me out to lunch_?”

“You’re the one who wanted two gay wingmen. You figure it out,” Kurt says.

“No, I meant it. I have to keep giving shifts to your boyfriend there and I’m seriously broke. You should take me out to lunch.”

Blaine draws beers for the pair of cops Kurt pushed up next to and grins while he listens to them banter and bitch at each other. He loves Kurt like this; last week he’d met Rachel and, besides the shock-and-awe factor of meeting Kurt’s cartoon princess in the flesh, he’d loved sitting there and watching them harass and nurture each other. Kurt thinks Rachel is spoiled and entitled, and Rachel thinks Kurt is far too bitter, and they’re both fiercely loyal to the other. He’d sat there, his chin propped on his fist, and watched them bicker, and his hand had stolen under the table to grab Kurt’s to squeeze it, because he’d been afraid he would accidentally start blurting out confessions if he didn’t. Kurt had turned and given him a heart-melting smile, and then turned on a dime and started bitching at Rachel again. He’s sure he fell in love a little bit more, right then.

Kurt makes one more smart remark to Tracy, “... and when we do go out, for god’s sake, put something more appealing on. You look like an ill-advised Fashion Plates experiment,” and then he slaps the same gay weekly where Blaine reads his strip down on the counter.

“Have you looked at this today?” Kurt inquires, his eyes warm.

“Nope, no time. I was late getting out of the house this morning –“ Kurt’s grin is soft, shy. “And then I went running, had to shower, and then get here. Good one today?”

Kurt turns it around and slides it across the bar.

And it’s _him_. It’s Kurt’s usual style, caricatured and stylized, but that’s his hair, his weirdo eyebrows (and Kurt had sworn he loved them, but he should have known when he wouldn’t stop tracing them with his fingers one lazy afternoon that something was up), and his smile. Kurt’s three favorite characters sit side by side at a bar: The Princess with an over-garnished cocktail glass by her hand, The Drag Queen with a simple glass of dark wine, and The Everyman with a beer. All of them are sitting with their heads sunk into their hands across from him. And across the bottom is his caption: “Wanna talk about it? I’m desperate for new lyrics. That’ll be $8.”

He stares at it until Tracy grabs it out of his hands, looks at it and crows, “Oh my god, we have _a celebrity bartender_.”

Kurt raises a brow at him, and Tracy grabs his arm and asks him where the blu-tack is and then says, “Oh fine. Kiss him again. I’ll figure this out.”

_“You made me a character?”_

“You have a very interesting face. And I don’t have a New York working artist type – there’s stuff I can’t have any of them say, not without it changing the meaning or threatening the integrity of the character, and my agent is trying to get me into the _Voice_ , so. I had to.” Kurt’s chin is high and he has his arms wrapped around himself, so Blaine nods his head toward the end of the bar and starts walking.

When Kurt gets there he’s already talking, “I’m sorry, I really should have –“ but Blaine grabs him and pushes him up against the wall at the end of the bar next to the kitchen window, and presses him into a kiss. There is so much he wants to say, but Kurt’s hands flutter around his back and his hair before his arms finally wrap firm around his shoulders. Half the room is catcalling and Blaine is at work, so this can’t go on for too long, but he can hear Tracy yelling, “No, really, somehow he is _a celebrity bartender_. Since when is that a thing?” in the background and laughter chasing after it, and he is overwhelmed with it.

This is a place where he belongs, and this joy is too much, and he pulls back and says, “ _Kurt._ I love it.” He waits, just for a second, but he’s known it was true for weeks already and it’s so easy to say now, so he rests his forehead against Kurt’s and whispers, “I love you.”

“ _Oh._ Okay. Good. Me too.” There he is again: wide, happy eyes, smiling mouth, color high on his cheeks. Blaine wants to look at him for a very long time, and he wants him to always look this happy.

He watches Kurt’s smiling face and thinks about Kurt’s work, about the way he’s come to understand it as they’ve wrapped their lives up tighter and tighter together over the last few weeks. The Princess, The Drag Queen, The Everyman: they’re all part of Kurt, part of what makes his voice what it is. And now he’s one of them.

He says, “Okay. Good,” and then he kisses him again.

 

**END**


End file.
